Relationships for Life: How Conscious Love Transcends Crisis, Pain and Self Avoidance

By Frank Natale

The qualities of aliveness in our relationships determine the quality of our life. Natale reveals how to recognize and recreate the 20 vital qualities of relationship including responsibility, service and acknowledgment, affinity and trust, effective communication, honorable sexuality, forgiveness, laughter, humor and playfulness, relatedness and the presence of love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9780970144331

Book preview

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Relationships for Life

How Conscious Love

Transcends Crisis, Pain

and Self Avoidance

Frank Natale

Copyright 1990-1992, 2011. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, website or broadcast.

Published by Morgan Road

ISBN: 978-0-9701443-3-1

...in seeking these qualities, you will gain an opportunity for greater awareness of your self, which is the highest achievement any of us can accomplish at any given moment.

– Frank Natale

Praise for Frank Natale’s Relationships book:

"...clear, concise and razor sharp in its ability

to reveal you to yourself."

– Kindred Spirit, UK

"An empowering energy fills this book. The insightful

concepts stir the emotions in recognition of truth."

– Leading Edge Review, U.S.

...a new age teacher with lots of humor and wisdom.

– Connection, Germany

Contents

Forward

Introduction

Creating Alive Relationships

One: Being Responsible to Each Other

Two: Responsiveness and Existential Living

Three: Thought is Creative

Four: The Choice to Think

Five: Service and Acknowledgment

Six: Trust and Affinity

Seven: Effective Communication

Eight: Absence of Parental Authority

Nine: The Ability to Receive

Ten: Self-Esteem

Eleven: Honorable Sexuality

Twelve: Freedom and Dignity

Thirteen: The Ability to Be Alone Together

Fourteen: Creativity

Fifteen: Healing

Sixteen: Forgiveness

Seventeen: Assertiveness

Eighteen: Laughter, Humor and Playfulness

Nineteen: Relatedness

Twenty: The Presence of Love

Forward

This book is based on Frank Natale’s lifetime of experience helping tens of thousands of people transform their relationships and manifest greater clarity, creativity and achievement in their lives. The original version, Mastering Alive Relationships, was first published in 1990 and included vignettes from Frank’s life along with select self-discovery exercises. Prior to his passing in 2002 Frank requested an abridged version be edited to focus on the 20 qualities presented here. Let’s get to the point, he said. And that’s what has been done.

A gifted teacher and healer, Frank studied and worked with many leaders of the modern human consciousness movement including Charles Dederich, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rodgers, Fritz Perls, Baba Muktananda, J. Krishnatmurti and Buckminster Fuller. In 1967 he was a cofounder of Phoenix House in New York, one of the world’s largest residential treatment programs for chemical dependency. After twelve years as clinical director Frank chose to leave Phoenix House and concentrate his work on serving successful functioning personalities who wanted to improve the quality of their communications and relationships.

Frank began teaching experiential seminars, founded The Natale Institute and, over the following twenty years, developed a body of work he described as designed for Individuals willing to see their problems as self-imposed limits, who choose to move beyond those limitations to create a higher level of consciousness and enjoyment in their lives. The 20 qualities presented in this book were the foundation of the Natale Relationships seminar series.

For those of us who studied with Frank, and presented his work, it was a privilege and an extraordinary opportunity to be of service to others. Frank challenged each of us to realize our aspirations, to be effective human beings and to make a difference. The lessons found in these 20 qualities of what Frank called alive relationships will empower you to let go of negative thought processes, discover a greater understanding of your self and, ultimately, make conscious choices about how you want to live your life. Enjoy.

With love and all it truly means,

Ralph Cissne

Introduction

After years of teaching relationships courses to thousands of students my intention with this book is to allow you to turn to any page and learn something new about relationships or at least discover something new about what you already know.

The qualities described in this book are found in personal or romantic situations, the two areas of life that receive the most attention, but they are also evident or lacking in our relationships with money, religion, sex, health, work and authority. In fact, they are the indicators of the status of your relationship with everything that is a part of your life. And it is the overall quality of your life that determines your self-esteem and personal power, integrity, ethics and your standards. In all of these areas you have more choices than you think. These qualities, of course, may be present in varying degrees in your life now and this book is not intended for you to judge or keep score. Some of these qualities may not be present at all and please do not suppose that they should be.

This book provides you with distinct guidelines for gaining access to keys that unlock doors. The more doors you pass through, the more positive will be the effect on your life and the more effective your life will be. Ultimately, in seeking these qualities, you will gain an opportunity for greater awareness of your self, which is the highest achievement any of us can accomplish at any given moment.

The purpose of this book is for you to take a look at you, to evaluate where you are in your relationships and where you are genuinely willing to be. It is designed to help you achieve or strengthen those vital signs that are part of what I prefer to call  alive relationships. It provides the opportunity for you to learn how to create rather than to blame.

Creating or strengthening these alive characteristics demands making choices, being aware of your actions and thoughts, then transforming them. Take your time with this book, with your choices and with your transformation. And enjoy the results. Use these ideas for they are yours now. If you do, your old beliefs will crumble and your limitations will dissolve. Reach for the highest in yourself in all your relationships and empower others to do the same. Most importantly, enjoy and celebrate all of your relationships.

As love,

Frank Natale

Creating Alive Relationships

We live in fast times. Our personal environment changes sometimes abruptly and significantly. Forms alter and shift. Appearances whirl in and out like mosaics in a kaleidoscope. Facades flash by like billboards. And in the process of this intense and constant change, technological, social, evolutionary, it seems that half of us are looking for a relationship and half of us are running away from one.

Little wonder that in this age of transformation, of everything as we know it, the obvious aspects of relationships are easily overlooked. Little wonder that a lot of our relationships turn out the way we have unconsciously envisioned them. It is also not surprising that a great many people in our society have, and co-exist within the confines of, relationships that are deader than a cold Big Mac.

Without our relationships we would not exist. The qualities of aliveness found in our relationships determine the quality of our existence. The intention of this book is to show you how to identify these qualities, which may or may not be present in your relationships. It also points the way to adding any or all of these qualities to your life. This book will affect the manner in which you view your relationships. It will help you assess these vital signs of relationship and make the choice to acquire them.

A truly alive relationship exists when we play with reality and allow it to play with us in the same way a tennis player hits the ball over the net and then, on the return, the ball creates when and how the player must respond. This play of creation and re-creation between the two players is what keeps the game alive and going strong. One player does not stand still hitting the ball back to the other player. On the return each player must move to the ball. They must change their point of view in order to stay alive and in the game. This is the same interactive play that must happen in order to create a relationship that is truly alive. The key is the harmonious play that occurs between you and whomever, or whatever, you choose. The result is the creation of aliveness essential to any healthy relationship.

The best business managers don’t get paid to maintain the status quo. Their job is to develop new products, open new territory, increase company morale and profits. The dynamics of aliveness is vital to any thriving enterprise or relationship. I’ve witnessed many personal relationships flourish in the excitement of early stage aliveness. Then they settle down or marry and begin to define each other to death, framing the relationship in tiresome belief systems until they are perfect and trapped in expectations of themselves and others close to them. In this book you will find new choices that are now available to you. And the odds are good that you’ll be a happier person within or without your present relationships.

The relationships that you have may be very alive, but may resemble the walking wounded or terminally ill. My suggestion is that you do not dwell on the dead parts. Dead relationships can and often do occur between children and their parents, lovers and their partners, employees and their employers. There are reasons for this, but they are not relevant here. What is relevant and necessary is to focus on the positive result. The path to aliveness in relationships is not to focus on the dead part. That’s like going to the morgue to meet someone. Focus on the parts that are alive. The proper approach is not to spend all of your time examining what is wrong with you. The proper approach is to pay close attention to what is right with you. Focus, and then refocus, on those parts. This doesn’t mean you should avoid what is unwanted. Simply choose to think in terms of solution rather than dissolution.

Choose to take the bridge that will bring you farther across the river and closer to where you are willing to be. When you concentrate on what is wrong you are impotent, frigid and petrified. Strategically, for your own welfare, it is an error to focus on the dead part where pain has become a familiar psychological comfort zone. Dwelling on the pain and crisis is the avoidance of self. The familiar pain and crisis also attracts the most attention, which we frequently mistake for love and friendship. In contrast, to accelerate your aliveness is to make the choice to think and to focus your awareness on what you are willing to have in life. That is the bridge. That is the connection. That is the consciousness that guides you across and moves you forward. The way you create life is to look at what is right and ask, How do I create more of that? Then you make conscious choices to let go of what does not serve and embrace what does.

When you refuse to focus on your negative baggage whatever is unwanted begins to disappear. When you refuse to nurture, support or agree with the roots of negativity the roots will rot from lack of attention. Alive relationships are those relationships in which relating continues. To cut off that relating in an attempt to preserve a relationship is literally to kill it. Alive relationships are those in which the definition of love has been elevated to its proper place.

Love is the only constant, the only reality, and when you accept and understand that you will know it. One of the ways to get that love, of course, is through relationships. That’s why we chase after someone with whom we think we are in love, someone who pushes the right buttons, who allows us to experience ourselves as love. Our problems begin when we start trying to define and mould our future happiness